Elwy Named Director of Veterans Administration Research Information Center.

A. Rani Elwy, an associate professor of health policy and management, has been named the new director of the Veterans Administration’s Center for Information Dissemination and Education Resources (CIDER).

CIDER is based at the VA Boston Healthcare System and is under the VA Health Services Research & Development Service (HSR&D), which researches multiple aspects of VA healthcare, including patient care, care delivery, health outcomes, cost, and quality.

Elwy is also an investigator at HSR&D’s Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR), and is a former Co-Implementation Research Coordinator for the HIV/Hepatitis Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (HIV/Hepatitis-QUERI). She is a health psychologist and health services researcher who examines veterans’ access to mental healthcare and complementary and integrative medicine, and communication between patients, families, and providers. One of her studies that examined both the intended and unintended consequences of large-scale adverse event disclosures led to her receiving a Certificate of Appreciation for Public Health Communications Research in Patient Safety.

Established in 2004, CIDER disseminates important HSR&D research findings to policymakers, clinicians, researchers, managers, veterans, and the larger healthcare community. CIDER does this, in part, by monitoring the HSR&D portfolio and publications for important evidence-based findings, identifying target audiences, and developing products and strategies for dissemination. CIDER also facilitates educational opportunities (i.e., cyberseminars, annual meetings, and state-of-the-art conferences) that allow the VA HSR&D community to share information necessary to improve VA healthcare, in addition to managing the HSR&D, QUERI, and R&D websites.